We never know who we are until we come out and state the un-obvious.
My housemate Gaby Sanchez billed herself as an Occupational Therapist and I billed myself as a Med Tech/CNA.
Health care workers.
I was aware that Gaby was in terrific physical condition with many dance classes but chucked that up to being young, smart, and willing to go to the gym, attributes I also share and shared in great abundance in my youth, right down to the dance classes.
Gaby is always a splash in lavender — her color — and partaking in the lush exhuberance of personal dance.
It takes great vigilance to tend oneself in the finest mechanisms of self-presentation. It is a lot of work to be looked at so much.
It is a labor that is usually better suited to the magnitude of the stage or of large gatherings, but to do so at a minute level is a gift to ordinary humanity.
Imagine going to the grocery store and seeing a movie star pushing her cart through the aisles. You can’t help a second look. She might smile at you, imparting a bit of grace.
She is Venus incarnate, and you go away a better person for having been in her presence. This is equally true of men, and for any kind of predelictions in private life. To look good for passersby is a service to civilization.
Imagine my surprise when this health care worker said, “By the way, I am doing a show.”
A lot of bells went off. A show.
Dayum. I should be doing a show.
Artists have envy. There is no way past it. It is also a sign of how things should go. Get back on that horse or eat your heart out.
The obstacles are serious. At fifty-nine, I have billed myself as the most reliable health care worker on the block. I say it takes five people who live for a facility to keep a facility running, and damnit if I didn’t become that person, at the expense of working every night, which is not how you “do a show.”
So where am I?
Five years into a great vocation that pays the rent, something I needed. But now I need something else.
I got a ticket to Gaby’s show. I went.
It was a lovely burlesque cabaret, and Gaby acquitted herself admirably as the Fairy Queen Hippolyta, as did all of the players. We sat down to $30 tickets, downtown business cocktails, a bit of the noshies, and away we went.
Oberon and Titania.
METHOUGHT I WAS ENAMOUR’D OF AN ASS.
Truman Buffet Photography
https://tickets.thetripledoor.net/eventperformances.asp?evt=1955